POLICY RATHER THAN POLITICS

Angela Merkel, leader of Germany for the past 16 years, is stepping down. Much is being written about her legacy to Germany and the world but one comment, by Matt Qvortrup of Coventry University, is eye catching: ‘She has turned German politics into a discussion about policy rather than politics.’ Policy is about what we should be doing here and now to respond to the needs of the people for whom we are responsible. Politics is about what we should be doing to get the votes of those who support us. The others, for whom we are also responsible, can be ignored. Policy is focused on the common good and builds community. Politics is about responding to sectional interests and is divisive.

Another female leader in Europe in the last forty years was Margaret Thatcher. She too sought for a policy that would work for the UK but she did not mind being divisive in the process. While being prepared for a meeting with someone new to her, she would ask, ‘Is he (she) one of us?’ As if to say, ‘Do they share our (my) views?’ The Germans call Merkel, ‘Mutter’ (Mother). The British called Thatcher, ‘the Iron Lady’. Which would you prefer?

Some five years ago the flow of migrants was seen as a threat to many European countries. Angela Merkel understood this but she put the interests of the migrants first and welcomed around a million of them. It was the thing to do. Even if it would be a huge strain on the country, ‘we can manage’, she said. And they did.

Self-interest, to the exclusion of others, is a powerful urge. ‘They’ are different; they are strangers, poor, handicapped, of another religion, gender, etc. They threaten us because they will disturb our comfort, our security, our way of thinking. If we welcome them, we will have to change. Self-interest is there in the Hebrew and Christine scriptures. Moses had to rebuke Joshua when he complained about prophets who were not ‘with us’ prophesizing. And Jesus did the same with John when he complained about people who were not ‘one of us’ acting in his name.

John’s eyes were still closed and he could not learn from the example of Jesus himself who welcomed ‘tax-collectors and prostitutes’, foreigners, people with leprosy, handicapped people, poor widows, noisy children and so many others. All these people ‘disturbed’ the Pharisees and, seemingly, Jesus’ own disciples. And when we look into our own lives, no matter how generous we try to be, we know that people who are ‘different’ are somehow a challenge to us. Yet we also know that if we respond to that challenge, it opens doors, not only for them, but for us.        

26 Sept 2021               Sunday 26B                Num 11:25-29       Jam 5:1-6        Mk 9:38…48       

KEN SARO WIWA

 

KEN SARO WIWA

Ken Saro Wiwa was a Nigerian campaigner for the human rights of the Ogoni people in the Niger River delta who was executed by dictator Sani Abacha’s regime in 1995. The Ogoni are a minority group of one million in a country of 200 million, so his focus on his own people did not make him a national figure in his life time. But his rigged trial and execution - together with eight others, making ‘the Ogoni Nine’ – outraged international sensitivity and made his name known. Saro Wiwa was also a writer and a broadcaster, so his campaign was not just focused on one issue but developed a wider consciousness of civic awareness, particularly in the way the Shell Oil company was allowed by the Nigerian government to exploit the rich oil reserves of the delta without attending to the environmental impact on the lives of the people. Mark Dummett, of Amnesty International, says that while the company claimed that in one area of Ogoniland, only 1,640 barrels of oil spilled into the environment, an independent estimate put it at 100,000 barrels. Shell saw its Nigerian business as ‘the jewel in the crown of its exploration and production division’.

The result is that Saro Wiwa is now remembered principally as a prophet of ecological justice, something that is becoming increasingly relevant today. In his speech at his trial in 1995, he said;

‘We all stand before history. I am a man of peace, of ideas. Appalled by the denigrating poverty of my people who live in a richly endowed land, distressed by their political marginalisation and economic strangulation, angered by the devastation of their land, their ultimate heritage, anxious to preserve their right to life and decent living and determined to usher in to this country as a whole a fair and just democratic system which protects everyone and every ethnic group and gives us all a valid claim to human civilisation, I have devoted my intellectual and material resources, my very life, to a cause in which I have total belief and from which I cannot be blackmailed or intimidated.’

His courage and commitment are echoed in the readings we have this Sunday: ‘Let is lie in wait for the virtuous man, since he annoys us and opposes our way of life.’ The Book of Wisdom is a scene setter for the gospel words; ‘the Son of Man will be delivered into the hands of man; and they will put him to death.’ We can see the deaths of Ken Saro Wiwa and his eight companions in this tragic tradition of a world ‘groaning on one great act of coming to birth.’ Their deaths repeat the death of the Son of Man and set off an explosion of revulsion across the planet. But it also forged a conviction among many, especially the young, that the struggle for justice was the one worthwhile cause facing humanity today.[1] 

19 September 2021       Sunday 25B                 Wis 2:12…20        James 3:16-4:3        Mk 9:30-37

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[1] Material for this piece comes from: Fallon, H, (ED), I am a man of peace, Writings inspired by the Maynooth University Ken Saro Wiwa Collection, 2020

DESTINED TO SUFFER

 

DESTINED TO SUFFER

Life oscillates between a desire to avoid pain and welcoming the sense of achievement that suffering often brings. We know, in our bones, that there is ‘no sweet without sweat’ and yet we are surprised by suffering. It is an unwelcome intruder. Just after a peak moment in the gospels where the disciples recognise who Jesus is – ‘you are the Christ’- Jesus pours cold water on their euphoria with the words, ‘the Son of Man is destined to suffer grievously.’ When we hear of read of the lives of great men and women, we know there is something just round the corner, waiting to happen. Beethoven will suddenly go deaf; Martin Luther King will suddenly be shot.

We also know that this diminishment or death mysteriously enhances the work and reputation of the person. Lincoln freed the slaves and saved the Union but he was also assassinated. All three events go together to forge his place in history. Martha Quest is an autobiographical novel by Doris Lessing about a teenage girl monitoring her own moods and thoughts in an environment of constant rebellion against her parents on a farm in colonial era Zimbabwe. She eventually breaks free and takes a job in town but the luta continues. It is a struggle to find herself. Who is she? Who am I?

Every life, in one way or another, faces this question. The struggle and the pain is to stay with the question until there is peace. This peace, or consolation, is described by Jerome Nadal, one of Ignatius of Loyola’s closest followers, as ‘an inner joy, a serenity of judgement, a relish, a light, a reassuring step forward, a clarification of insight.’ It is sad when we get stuck along the way and give up. This was Jesus’ quarrel with the Pharisees. They gave up the search and settled for something seemingly secure but ultimately lifeless. The whole of Jesus’ life was, in Paul’s words, a ‘groaning in giving birth’. He announced the coming of the kingdom but that was only the beginning. The struggle was yet to intensify; it had started with the beginning of creation and would go on until there is true peace on earth.

I wanted to call this piece ‘Fashion or Fission’ but decided it was too catchy, too cheap! Still, ‘fashion’ – what others do - is what we settle for when we can’t face the pain of fission. Fission means division, splitting and exploding. It means energy, even atomic or nuclear energy, the energy we feel when we ‘split’ off from our parents, our home, our security and start something new. The prophet Joel announces, ‘your young people will see visions and your old people dream dreams,’ and Peter kicks off Pentecost with these words. They are echoed by poet T. S. Eliot; ‘old men ought to be explorers.’

Children are born explorers too and it is a great sadness when this spirit is drummed out of them by the demand to ‘conform.’ The desert is blooming with flowers, unseen.

September 12, 2021    Sunday 24B                Is 50:5-9          James 2:14-18         Mark 8:27-35  

Nadal, cf The First Jesuits,p83.

INDEPENDENCE 1980. FREEDOM 20?

 

INDEPENDENCE 1980. FREEDOM 20?

‘The hardest lesson of my life has come to me late. It is that a nation can win freedom without its people becoming free.’ This reflection of Joshua Nkomo alerts us to the slow process by which people become awake in a civic sense. Painful as it was the long struggle for independence in Zimbabwe was only the beginning of the process. Sometimes it seems as if there is even harder work ahead and that work centres on the task of waking up.

How do we open our eyes and our ears to the reality that eludes us? How do we come to a sense of confidence as a people? Fyodor Dostoevsky, the great Russian novelist, wrote in The Brothers Karamazov, ‘Salvation will come from the people, from their faith and their meekness. Fathers and teachers, watch over the people's faith and this will not be a dream. I've been struck all my life in our great people by their dignity, their true and seemly dignity.’ Have we not also been struck by the dignity of the great people of Zimbabwe? Yet this dignity seems to take time to bear fruit in civic consciousness, in salvation.

On one of his tiring journeys, the people brought a deaf and dumb man to Jesus. He took the man to one side, away from the crowd, and said, ‘Ephphatha!’ ‘Be opened!’ His ears were opened and his tongue loosened. Why did Jesus take him ‘away from the crowd?’ Probably because they would misunderstand. Like crowds everywhere, their first instinct would be, ‘We have a miracle worker among us, one who fixes things instantly.’ But Jesus didn’t fix things instantly. 1980 didn’t fix things instantly. Jesus wasn’t that kind of Messiah. He had to ‘set his face towards Jerusalem’ and suffer there terribly before he could bring a lasting solution to humanity.

They took ages to understand that – even his closest followers. But they did in the end. Their eyes and ears were opened, at last. Ephphatha! We face exactly the same process. How can our eyes and ears be opened? In just one word, prayer. Every prayer is valuable; the invocation of the Supreme Being, the repeated prayer of the Indian holy man, the Jew in the synagogue, the Muslim in the mosque or any other place, the Christian saying the rosary in their home or participating in the liturgy in their church. All these are precious. But they are not enough. They all have to find their fulfilment, not in many words, but in an openness of the eyes, ears and heart; ‘Ephphatha!’

 

There is nothing wrong in asking God for what we want so long as we remember it is far more important to listen to what he wants. Alas, we are not good at that. We far prefer talking to him rather than listening. If we could listen to him and to each other we would quickly develop a sense of community and civic awareness.

5 Sept 2021          Sunday 23B          Is 35:4-7     Jam 2:1-5         Mk 7:31-37